Because the Wreck

Because the wreck
could not be fixed,

they dragged it
under an oak.

First Budweiser, then Jim Beam,
they doused the crushed tanks,

kicked the warped fork
and pretzeled spokes—

the headlight looked like
a broken bowl.

Someone brought out the come-along
and the logging chains,

others grabbed gas
and pistols and  lighters

and ten feet off the ground—
the ape hangers canted forward

like someone’s head
hanging down—

they chucked bottles of gasoline
at my father’s bike.

You could barely hear the pistols
over the roaring,

or the sound of those wet faces
yelling his name

as runnels of gas
thinned into long feathers

and dropped as flame.

Filed under: Poetry